Hi Maybelle, it is so scary getting a positive FIT result and it must feel more terrifying that you're pregnant. I hope your pregnancy will go smoothly.

The FIT test looks for tiny traces of blood in poo so it is a good sign that yours was slightly raised. Were you seeing blood in your poo or did you have other symptoms? (if you don't mind sharing). It's a good idea to keep a diary of symptoms to keep track of them.

I've also been referred as my FIT test was positive but it was at 400ug/g and she didn't seem concerned and said there's low risk of malignancy. This was in April and I still hadn't heard from them (even though I was on an urgent waiting list) so my doctor recently moved me on the 2ww referral. Do you have an idea of how long you should be waiting?

Hope everything goes okay for both of us.

Hi Amelia,

I made a post a few weeks ago explaining my symptoms if you'd like to read it, should just be on my page. 

I never noticed any blood in my stool and only really saw it on my stool once if I remember correctly. 

GP said I should receive a phone call in a few weeks to dicuss with someone whether or not they think I need a sigmoidscopy which I was already on a waiting list for.

I'm just absolutely terrified as I suffer from health anxiety badly and don't understand why she said if I was 50 or over they wouldn't even class my result as positive, so why is it positive if I'm 25 and have no family history? Very concerned.

Hi it must be hard having symptoms for so long. I have health anxiety aswell, so I understand how hard it is to not overthink everything they say and to keep thinking the worst.

I also think that's confusing that they wouldn't class your result as positive if you were over 50. Bowel cancer's more common for over 50s so it would make more sense to count a lower result as positive for those at greater risk. It sounds like they were trying to reassure you but I don't think they worded it well. It's good that you don't have a family history of bowel cancer as that may have increased your risk.

A result higher than 10ug/g is a positive and a result at 20ug/g or higher means there is a greater risk of polyps or malignancy.

It's good that they will be calling you to discuss further tests because it's important that they find what is causing your symptoms so they can be treated. It would be unlikely to be cancer if you don't have any of the risk factors but it is better to find it early as treatment will be more likely to be effective.

Remember cancer is not the only possibility here. Given that she said, she wouldn't be worried if you were over 50, it's possible she is concerned about something like ulcerative colitis which is more commonly diagnosed in younger people and she has pretty much ruled out bowel cancer and diverticulitis, which would be the concerning explanations for older people, so the only ones remaining are ones more common in young people.

She may also have meant it wouldn't be a concern in the screening for older people, where I think the cut-off can be higher. If that were the case, she phrased it badly, but she might have meant, "since you have symptoms, we'd better check it out, but it's really unlikely anything is wrong. If this were a screening rather than diagnostic, it wouldn't even count as positive."

Or she may have meant it wouldn't even particularly worry her if you were over 50, let alone at your age.

Whichever, it doesn't sound like there is much to worry about. It sounds like she feels fairly confident everything is OK, but has decided to be especially thorough and check it out just to rule out anything serious, which doesn't necessarily mean cancer. Ulcerative colitis, diverticulitis, Crohn's, a polyp are all other more serious causes and most are more likely than cancer.  

Quite likely they want to rule out Crohn's or ulcerative colitis as I think those are most likely to begin at your age.

I don't think I have the symptoms of crohns or colitis and my problems is that because I'm pregnant they're not going to do any scopes until after I've given birth, which would then make it well over a year since my symptoms started.

I do have what my Dr said look like piles, could this be the cause of the positive result?

In all honesty I'm really not coping, I have terrible health anxiety which has gotten worse since being pregnant and I've absolutely convinced myself that I have colon cancer that has spread to my other organs as I've had chest pain and felt awful all day.

Oh, I would say it's highly likely to be piles. At your age and during pregnancy, piles is probably by far the most likely option. Especially if the result isn't super-high. And given that your doctor thought she saw piles, I'd say it would be pretty surprising if it were anything else.

I wasn't suggesting you had Crohn's or colitis, just that your doctor might want to rule them out, given the bleeding. It doesn't sound like she thinks it anything serious, but she might figure that given your age and the bleeding, it would be worth ruling those out.

But yeah, piles are a very common cause of positive results.

Colon cancer would be well down the list. The consultant told me that the risk at my age - 40 at the time - and with weight loss and the GP saying no sign of piles, the risk of colon cancer was less than 1%. Given you are much younger than me, have signs of piles and are pregnant, when piles are common, I would say your odds of cancer is a good deal lower than mine, maybe one in a few hundred?